Crimson and Clover
by Princess Corkey
Summary: Because that's what love is. You're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you fall. A look into pureblood society and the reconstruction of the wizarding world after the fall of Voldemort. Rated T for sexual content and mature themes. OC/Pansy and OC/Katie
1. Dream On

"Oi, you!"

Do you know that instinctive moment when someone calls out and you turn your head, because somehow you just know they're referring to you? Well that particular sensation didn't occur to Joseph Norton on this particular day, sitting on this particular step, and in fact he wasn't at all aware of anyone's presence behind him until he was smacked upside the head with a newspaper by a large middle-aged woman. Even then, there was too much thought cushioning his brain for the impact to have any real effect.

"You've been sitting outside my pub for three hours," Mrs. Burkowski growled at him, giving him the same stink-eyed glare she gave him every time he sat outside the Leaky Cauldron, on this very step. Just as he had that day, the day his life began. Somehow, and he wasn't quite sure how the two went together, he also considered it the day his life ended. The one he lived anyway. Ever since that day he had been a bystander in his own life.

That was the day he met her.

Mrs. Burkowski had been there then too. That was the first time he received her look of disapproval, only at the time it had fazed him much deeper. Today he could care less, but if he looked back far enough he could recall a time when it mattered what people saw when they looked at him. When anything mattered but her.

They were always _her_ in his memories. To him they were one in the same, two halves of the perfect girl. It would have made very little sense to someone intruding on his thoughts. How could two women, two who had probably never even met for that matter, be one? It was simple. They just were.

Joey could remember being in love; or at least, he thought he could. He was sure it was a warm feeling, burning at times, but perhaps the warmth in his memory was simply the absence of the cold inside him now; the nothing. Also, he was fairly certain at one point he felt closer to the clouds than the ground. But that too could have been his imagination.

Of one thing, however, he was absolutely positive. And that was that at one point, for one brief moment, everything in his life had been just right. For one tiny flash of time, all the aces were in his hand and he was on top of the world.

_Then_, he reminded himself as he pushed himself up off the sidewalk and began the trek home, _you fell_.

* * *

**Dream On - Aerosmith  
**

**Disclaimer: No, I do not own Harry Potter. That honor belongs to JK Rowling. I also do not own Joey, believe it or not.**

**This story is dedicated to my friend Joooeeeyyy (With that many letters. I'm sure of it.) who asked me to write him into a fanfiction. All I heard was CHALLENGE, and being me, I of course leapt at the opportunity. Hope you approve Joey!**


	2. Strangers in the Night

It was chilly that day. Not cold, but chilly, the temperature low enough that one might wear gloves, but not so low as to inhibit adventure outside one's home.

Joey was walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, as he had forgotten his gloves on this particularly chilly day. As he happened by The Leaky Cauldron, an establishment he couldn't recall ever having entered, he heard a commotion that originated on the inside.

This was particularly intriguing for Joey, who had recently been promoted at his job working for the Daily Prophet, and had now stepped up from getting coffee to, well, filing papers, but he just knew one day soon it would be his turn to write, and he'd be damned if he was gonna pass up any opportunity to be the first one on the scene of a story.

To Joey's dismay, however, all he saw as he walked through the doors of the pub was an altercation between a larger, middle-aged woman and a younger girl, perhaps slightly younger than Joey's own age of twenty two. At first glace he noticed that she was quite beautiful.

At second glance he noticed that she was falling over herself drunk.

"I want you _OUT_!" the larger woman was yelling, her voice loud and resonating, glaring intensely at the beautiful girl. "Out of my pub, _NOW_!"

"I want out," the girl was sobbing, swinging around a bottle of wine haphazardly. "I want to get awaaaaaaaay!" She lurched backwards suddenly and Joey's nice guy instincts kicked in automatically.

She was in his arms in an instant, looking up at him but not seeing him through glazed eyes.

"She's your trouble now!" the large woman, whom Joey could now see wore a clumsily written nametag reading _Mrs. Burkowski _snarled in his direction, making to return to her position back in the kitchen. Without turning her head, as if sensing that Joey would take direction better than her drunk patron, she added, "You best get her out of here right quick, 'fore I send Sam back here." Joey hadn't the slightest idea who Sam was, but based on the looks the other patrons in the pub were giving him, he had a feeling he didn't want to find out.

"Come on," Joey said, though quickly realizing that the girl's feet were now limp, and the majority of her weight was now hanging limply from his arms. "Come on," he repeated, more to himself this time, as he half-carried, half-dragged her outside.

A moment later they were sitting outside, Joey supporting the girl with one arm and trying to pry the bottle out of her hands with the other. At first she was having none of it, but she quickly forgot about it and her fingers went as limp as her legs.

Setting the bottle off to the side, Joey now focused on the task ahead: getting the strange girl, who had inexplicably become his burden, home.

"Where do you live?" he asked her, hoping it would be that easy. It wasn't.

"Who really lives?" she slurred, flailing her arms about around her. "Who ever _really_ lives?" She laughed bitterly.

Joey rolled his eyes. This was going to be a long night.

"Your address," he said softly, looking into her eyes. "What's your address?"

"2014 Effervescence Lane," she replied quietly, meeting his gaze. Triumphantly, Joey smiled.

"And where is that?" he prodded.

"Gone, gone, _gone_!" she cried, bursting into a new round of sobs. "Burned to the ground with everyone inside!" She keeled over, sobbing into his lap.

"Shh," he muttered uncomfortable, not quite sure what to do or say. Then it hit him. The simplest question, and the one he had been in such a hurry to rid himself of her he hadn't even thought to ask. "What's your name?"

"Pansy," she slurred. "Pansy…" she paused, as if she were trying very hard to remember. "Parkinson."

"That's a very pretty name," he mused, hoping to calm her. "Pansy…like the flower?"

"I was a flower once," Pansy sobbed. "I was young and beautiful and I had everything there was to have." She began sobbing so hard that, mixed with the drunken slur, her words were hardly distinguishable. "Then everything was wrong. We were on the wrong side and nothing will ever be right."

"Everything will be alright," Joey said, continuing his attempt to soothe her. Carefully, he pushed her hair back, away from where it was sticking to the tears. Looking back on it, he couldn't blame her for falling asleep in his lap.

Oh yes, this was going to be a long night.

* * *

**Strangers in the Night - Frank Sinatra**


	3. Dear Prudence

It was half past one in the morning before Joey managed to drag Pansy Parkinson through the door of her flat-number 16 Parsons Lane, the third flat she had thought might be hers-and nearly two by the time he convinced her to lie down on her couch.

"Don't leave me," she sobbed, clutching his arm as if her life depended on it. Still uncomfortable, Joey fidgeted about nervously before sitting down beside her, "shh"ing consolingly as if she were a small child in his care.

* * *

Joey awoke several hours later, unaware he had fallen asleep but for the horrible pain in his neck from the position at which he was still sitting, his arm twisted from Pansy's insistent clinging to him. He looked down at her, and, to his relief, she was still asleep.

As he was sneaking out the door, in the hopes she would forget their night together, and in fact his entire appearance in her life, completely, she spoke.

"Oh god," Pansy whispered, clutching the blanket over the back of her couch tight against herself before realizing she was fully clothed.

Joey was confused only for a moment, then the realization of her assumption set in.

"No!" Joey cried, a little too loudly, startling her. He cleared his throat and started again. "I didn't-that is to say, we didn't-you were drunk-" Pansy pursed her lips and nodded slowly "-and I brought you home. You asked me to stay, but we didn't..." he blushed, "...you know..."

Pansy looked at him suspiciously, but apparently decided his story seemed plausible enough, nodded again, more definitely this time, and began to stand up. Her face was expectant. "Your name?" she asked, irritated, after a moment of silence.

"Oh!" he said, understanding. "Of course. I'm Joey. Joey Norton."

Tentatively, she takes his hand in hers and gives it a light shake. "Pansy," she says; it's a formality, as she imagines she told him her name, and probably a lot more than she'd like him to know, in her drunken stupor last night.

When Pansy drops his hand, Joey has the sudden and strange feeling that he would have liked to have held it for a while longer. He forces this ridiculous notion out of his head and focuses on what she's saying now.

"I don't usually drink like that," she tells him, not meeting his eyes now, and Joey can tell she's embarrassed. Suddenly, though, her eyes shoot up, looking at him pleadingly. "I really don't."

"I believe you," he tells her honestly. "We all have those nights." This, however, is a slight stretch of the truth. Joey has never had as much to drink as Pansy had consumed the previous night, but he doesn't tell her this. She can tell just by looking at him, and she is thankful that he pretends her has for her sake. It's comforting, the feeling that he shares her flaw, even if they both know it to be false.

"I should go," Joey says suddenly, as Pansy's flat is quite small, and the proximity is becoming a little much for his liking.

Pansy nods silently. Neither speaks for a moment, and as suddenly as he met, Joey was out of the tiny flat and out of Pansy's life.

Or so he thought.

* * *

**AN: Just wanted to say thanks to Joey for keeping me on track with my writing, even if his persistence for a chapter a day is a little demanding! Lol jk, I love my writing:) Also congratulations to everyone who graduated this year! Welcome to the rest of your life!**


	4. Ain't That A Kick in the Head

It had been a week since Joey's strange interaction with the mysterious Pansy Parkinson, and she was all but forgotten to him. There were bigger, more exciting thoughts to be thought of in his mind just this moment.

"It's a small job," his editor had said, not looking at Joey but rather right though him. "Unimportant; I trust you can't screw it up too badly." Joey would have been insulted had he not known his editor long enough to recognize this as a rare compliment from the old man.

So there he was, on his way to Weasley's Wizard Weezes, the only place around to acquire an "extendable ear", according to one of the advertisements plastered around Diagon Alley. His headline was "Business Booms After Tragedy".

Upon entering the establishment, Joey was greeted with the store's usual flurry of excitement. Miniature explosions were going off in every corner of the store, students were chattering as they stocked up on items for the upcoming school year, and as per any day of the week, a few redheaded Weasley cousins were seen wandering the aisles, hoping for freebies.

Approaching the counter, Joey found himself yelling to be heard over the madness.

"I'm looking for George!" he yelled to the bleach blonde girl at the counter, though she was barely a foot away from him.

"George Weasley?" the girl yelled back, and though she meant it as a joke, the sarcasm was lost with the volume, and Joey nodded seriously. "Back this way," the girl called, gesturing widely for Joey to follow her.

The girl, whom Joey would later be introduced to as Verity, knocked softly on a door a ways back behind the counter, but entered long before any answer was given.

"Press," Verity said simply, closing the door behind Joey.

George must have noticed the surprised look on Joey's face, because he laughed. "She has a knack for that," he explained, shaking his head. "Every person that walks through the door, she knows."

"Joseph Norton," Joey said, extending his hand. Then, sensing the store frowned on formality, added, "Joey."

George grinned, shaking Joey's hand. "George," he said simply.

"Well I-" Joey began but another knock at the door and then the entrance of another girl-shorter, with curly, strawberry-blonde hair-interrupted him.

"They're back," she said, her tone telling Joey that for George, no further explanation was needed. George sighed exasperatedly, instantly heading for the door, pausing only for a moment to instruct the girl to "cover" for him while he was gone.

"I'm Katie," she said, grinning from ear to ear. "Katie Bell."

"Joey Norton," he introduced himself for the second time in as many minutes. "I'm with-"

"The Prophet," Katie finished for him smoothly. "Verity told me. Pleasure to meet you. Take a seat?"

Joey wasn't quite sure how, but she managed to say all of this and sit down in a matter or seconds, and he stood for a moment, gazing at the chair beside him, dazed. He sat.

"What is it you're writing about?" Katie asked, eyes wide as she waited expectantly for an answer.

Suddenly uncomfortable with his assignment, Joey responded quietly. "The, uh, headline is...'Business Booms After Tragedy'."

Katie's face clouded over instantly, her whole demeanor changing. "Meaning Fred," she deadpanned. Joey nodded.

"We miss him very much," she said simply. "And that's as far into it as I'm going. I won't allow you to make a spectacle of George." He tone rose as she went on, and Joey could tell she was displeased.

"I don't mean to...I mean, I have no intention of-" flustered, Joey shook his head, took a breath, and continued. "I want to help," he told Katie softly. "The Prophet needed a 'heartwarming' piece as a filler, and I think this could be an opportunity to talk about how this has brought the family and the business together. I don't want to 'make a spectacle' of anyone."

Katie looked at Joey intensely for a long, silent moment, then nodded, as if deeming his argument valid. "Fine," she responded shortly.

"Now then, first I thought we should get the business questions out of the way..." and Joey went off to ask Katie questions about numbers and figures and percentages and various other boring articles we won't bother with here, and Katie would have to scurry out of the room to get the answer from George. All in all, he felt rather confident that, by the end, he had won back the confidence of Katie Bell. Confident enough, in fact, that he went so far as to request a date.

"Would you like to have dinner with me?" he blurted out as he was just about to leave.

Katie was taken aback, and it took her a moment to answer. She stuttered over the words, a first for her in the entire two hours they had spoken. "I-I...I'd love to," she responded, smiling softly. Not the huge grin that had graced her features when she spoke of Fred, Joey noticed, but a smile nonetheless, and he was content with that.

They set a time and before he knew it, Joey was back out into the open of Diagon Alley again, and it was colder now. He buttoned up his jacket as he headed back to the office to look over his notes and perhaps get a jump start on the next morning's writing.

He was thinking about Katie, and the way Katie smiled, and how unlike him it was to take such a leap as to ask a pretty girl out, and then suddenly he remembered Pansy. He imagined it was probably the strange happenings of their night together that had prompted him to make such an uncharacteristic move, and was strangely thankful for her random acts of drunkenness that night.

It was as he was thinking these pleasant thoughts and daydreaming about how a date with Katie Bell might go when he walked right smack into the back of one Pansy Parkinson.

"There you are!" she exclaimed, turning around, and Joey was thankful she didn't point out his obvious lack of observation. "I was starting to think you wouldn't be here!"

Confused, all Joey found himself capable of doing at that moment was stand and stare, openmouthed, at her. _Uh, what?_

* * *

**Ain't That a Kick in the Head - Dean Martin**


	5. First Date

It was four o'clock, just two and a half hours before Joey was supposed to meet Katie Bell for dinner, and for some reason, still unexplained to him, he was sitting with Pansy at a table at a small cafe in Diagon Alley (Parsnips, she told him it was called, as she explained, blushing, that she was no longer welcome at the Leaky Cauldron).

"I wanted to thank you," Pansy began quietly, suddenly unsure of herself. "You know, for everything you did for me the other night." Again she blushed.

"But how did you...?" Joey began, but he was cut off.

"I know some people," she said vaguely. "It wasn't hard to find out you work for the Prophet." She muttered something about his address not being all that protected either, but Joey pretended not to hear. He was fairly certain he didn't want to know.

"So, um, yeah," she muttered uncomfortably, no longer looking at him. "Thanks. For, you know, everything. And for not trying anything. Thanks."

"You're welcome?" Joey said, and it came out as a question. He was rather uncomfortable, sitting there with Pansy, and he wasn't really sure what she was looking for from him.

"Would you like to go out sometime?" she asked suddenly, her eyes shooting up to meet his. She looked so hopeful that Joey was lost. How could he turn down those eyes? Without thinking, he nodded silently, and Pansy smiled beautifully.

"Tomorrow night?" she asked, suddenly excited. "I'll meet you here?"

Joey nodded again, unsure of exactly what was going on. Pansy was still smiling at him as she stood up, and Joey was still frozen to his seat as she walked off and out the door.

* * *

It was chilly outside, and the first thing Joey noticed upon arriving at their agreed upon meeting place was the brightness of the scarf and hat Katie was wearing.

"I'm blind!" Joey joked, pretending to shield his eyes from Katie's neon apparel. Katie laughed, and Joey noticed the way her whole face lit up with the action. Her eyes squinted, the dimples in her cheeks became prominent, and her smile stretched across her face. It was hard to ignore: Katie was quite beautiful, though she wore very little makeup and her hair was thrown carelessly into a messy bun. She was a rare natural beauty, and Joey liked it.

Without warning, Pansy's face appeared in Joey's mind, and without meaning to, he was drawing comparisons. Katie's frizzed out, strawberry curls against Pansy's carefully parted black locks; Pansy's dark, pleading eyes versus the quiet intensity of Katie's green ones. Katie was short and curvy and Pansy was tall and willowy. Thinking about it, it was almost comical how opposite they were.

"Joey?" Katie asked worriedly, waving a hand in front of his face, and, blushing, Joey realized that she had been saying his name for a while now.

"I'm so sorry," he apologized, much to Katie's amusement. "What were you saying?"

Katie just grinned and shook her head. "I said," she began, gesturing to the building they were in front of, "I didn't know this place had closed until I got here and saw the sign."

Joey turned to look. "Oh yeah," he said, realizing a little late where they were. "I heard about that. The owners were suspected to have affiliation with death eaters. They're under investigation, laying low."

Katie looked disappointed. "They had fantastic fish and chips..." she muttered, clearly uneasy at the mention of death eaters. Joey couldn't stand the way her face fell.

"I know another place that does," he said, grinning, hoping that if he smiled enough she would follow suit. He didn't understand it, but his stomach dropped every time the smile fell off her lips.

* * *

**First Date - Blink 182**


	6. Bed of Roses

There's a moment during a date when you realize how it's going to end. Before you weren't quite sure, but suddenly the way that person is looking at you, the closeness between you, and the timing all add up in your head and there it is.

This moment didn't take long to arise. Katie and Joey both picked up straight away the way they kept brushing their hands together, the way she laughed at almost everything he said, the way he kept looking at her. Oh yes, they knew.

But of course, as is the way of affection, denial and a fear of rejection set in, and both parties were fairly quiet as Joey walked Katie home.

"You look lovely," Joey said, then blushed as he remembered saying this earlier in the evening. He couldn't help repeating himself though; he loved the way her whole face lit up when he complimented her.

"Thanks," she muttered, ducking her head so that her hair fell over her face, though failing to hide her smile from him.

"Why are you hiding?" he asked, playfully pushing her hair behind her ear, managing to elicit a blush from her as well.

After an evening of laughing and enjoying the biggest plate of fish and chips Katie had ever layed eyes on in an overcrowded hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the cool air and the quiet street was a welcome change, but also an unpredicted one. Neither Katie nor Joey was ready for the night to end, but neither was willing to make the leap to make it last.

"I had a wonderful time tonight," Katie said in a voice that was quieter than Joey had heard from her all night.

"Me too," he said, and feeling suddenly both overly confident and quite unsure of himself, he grabbed her hind. She pretended not to notice, but secretly she reveled in the warmth.

"This is me," Katie said abruptly and without warning, turning to face the door to a two story building. "I live upstairs."

"Oh," was all Joey could manage.

Joey was certain that everyone in the neighborhood could feel the tension in the uneasy silence that followed this brief exchange.

It was one of those do or die moments, and Joey realized then and there that if he didn't take action, he wasn't going to have another chance. Fortunately for him, Katie seemed to be thinking something along the same lines, and in arguments that would come in the months that followed, neither would be able to prove it was the other that initiated the kiss, and neither would admit it to have been themselves.

It was the best first kiss either Katie or Joey had ever had. What had started out with every intention of being a goodnight peck quickly became pulling each other closer, breathing heavily, and what would soon prove to be a well-matched battle for dominance.

Joey wasn't sure at what point Katie's neighbors started whistling out their windows, but he assumed it was just before she fumbled around quickly for her keys as he kissed her neck, attempting to let the two of them inside without breaking apart. Though not the easiest of feats, Katie managed it, and within moments they were pulling each other clumsily up the stairs.

Once inside Katie's apartment, Joey lifted Katie up and she wrapped her legs around him in response. Not wanting to stop kissing her to ask where her bedroom was, he layed her down on the couch, and she didn't protest.

Neither of them had ever been so wrapped up in another person before. Their proximity was intoxicating, and keeping their hands off one another was proving to be a difficult task, one either seemed courageous enough even to attempt. Before either one knew it, Katie was on top, straddling Joey's lap as they kissed before he regained control.

Joey bit Katie's lip, and she couldn't help but let the slightest sound escape her lips. _And she had been planning on behaving herself too._ But those thoughts were gone, replaced with newer, more exciting ones of what letting go of her inhibitions might feel like. _Something like this_, she decided, giggling as Joey's hands inched up her thighs.

In one of the points between their constant struggle, Katie found herself on top of Joey, straddling his lap as she pulled her shirt up over her head, his hands gently guiding hers and discarding it onto the floor somewhere. Impatient, she tugged at the bottom of his shirt, silently begging for him to return the favor. Joey was more than happy to oblige.

They were both talking, innane chatter to ease their nerves, the whole time, though neither was really listening to the other nor even to themselves. One comment, however, stuck out in Katie's mind.

"You're perfect," Joey had said to her, somewhere in the middle of a conversation during a moment of resting and catching their breath. She couldn't see his face, they were too close together, close enough that her lips were resting against his, even though they weren't kissing. Looking back, it was Katie's favorite part of the night.

"Nobody's perfect," Katie muttered, half smiling at the compliment and half pained by the impossibility of his statement.

"Well," Joey said, interrupting himself to close the imperceptible gap between their lips. "You're pretty damn close."

Suddenly, startling Katie, Joey lifted her up off the couch. She gasped, but it quickly turned to a nervous giggle as she realized where he was taking her. This time he didn't need to ask her where her bedroom was. It seemed so obvious, so painfully clear, which door it was, despite his never having set foot in this building before tonight.

It just made sense.

* * *

**Bed of Roses - Bon Jovi  
**

**AN: Yes, this chapter got a little detailed. That's why it's "rated T for sexual content". If you don't like it, don't read it. However, if you do like it, please leave a review, because I haven't gotten any for this story yet!**


	7. Just A Kiss

Upon awakening, Joey opened his eyes to the top of Katie's head and a mass of frizzy hair in his face. Laughing silently, he carefully brushed it away so that he could see her face more clearly and held her closer to him.

"Good morning beautiful." Katie smiled before opening her eyes, and Joey kissed the top of her head.

Katie opened her eyes and looked at Joey for a moment, smiling. Suddenly, however, she jerked forward unexpectedly. "I have to get to work!" she squealed, glancing at the clock on her bedside table, which read 7:16.

Joey sat up, leaning against her headboard and grinning as he watched her dress.

"Well don't just stand there!" she cried, spinning on her heel and exiting the room. "Under the bed," she called over her shoulder. "Blue heels."

"Under the..." Joey muttered, but trailed off upon inspection. Apparently Katie stored a lot of her belongings beneath her bed.

When Katie reentered her bedroom, Joey waved one royal blue heel in the air. "Got this one, but it's twin isn't here."

Biting her lip, Katie surveyed the room. "Aha!" she cried, running over to a vase and pulling it out from between some flowers. "There you are!"

Joey raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

"When can I see you again?" Joey asked, just as Katie was rushing into the bathroom to do her makeup. As she closed the door, it became apparent she hadn't heard him.

Joey just smiled. He knew their paths would cross again, and, judging by Katie's soft kiss outside her door before sending him on his way and hurrying off on hers, she felt exactly the same way.

* * *

As Joey left his flat and headed off to meet Pansy, he argued with himself.

Was it wrong to have a date with Pansy when just this morning he had woken up in Katie's bed? If so, which of them was being wronged? Would it be okay if he told them both, and they were okay with it? Was he even at a point where it was necessary to tell either girl he was seeing the other?

Was he even seeing either of them?

These questions and more plagued Joey as he walked, unable to answer them. Apparation would have been much faster, but he had been going crazy at home and needed to feel the cool air on his face.

Looking back, he reasoned that he hadn't anticipated sleeping with Katie. It was intended merely as a simple date, and at the time that he had accepted Pansy's invitation, it still was. It wasn't until afterwards that things with Katie had...taken an interesting turn. He decided that going on dates with two girls was not the same as dating two people, and he reasoned that were he to begin dating a girl, he would never date another. That would be ridiculous anyway. _How could someone be interested in two people anyway?_ Joey questioned himself. _If one person isn't what your looking for and another is, wouldn't you just be with the other person?_

Joey would look back years later and reflect on the naivety of this though. He would later come to the decision that had he not justified his actions with this statement, perhaps none of the events of the next year would have ever occurred. He still never could decide if that was a good or bad thing.

But whatever this thought was-right or wrong; good or bad-it led him to continue his walk until he reached Parsnips.

* * *

"How long have you been waiting?"

Joey shrugged, smiling slightly as Pansy approached him. "Not long," he lied. In reality he had been sitting outside the restaurant for nearly an hour now, but as it was still ten minutes before their agreed meeting time, this seemed a silly thing to point out. "You look beautiful," he added. He wasn't lying. Her long, dark hair was pulled behind her in a bun with a few loose curls hanging in front of her face. It was the sort of hairstyle that one spent hours on to give the illusion of having simply woken up and brushed it. Unlike Katie's wild colors and casual jeans from the previous night, Pansy was dressed simply and elegantly in a short black dress.

"Shall we sit?" she asked, carefully avoiding acknowledging his compliment, but based on the blush on her cheeks and the smile on her lips, Joey wasn't worried.

* * *

As he walked her home, Joey noticed Pansy shivering.

"Do you want my jacket?" he asked, concerned. Pansy shook her head. "I'm fine," she replied unconvincingly. A few moments later however, when she wrapped her arms around herself, Joey simply took it off and wrapped it around her, taking the hint that she wasn't going to ask. he smiled appreciatively and thanked him.

"I had the most wonderful time tonight," Pansy said, smiling up at Joey from behind a few strands of hair.

"Me too," Joey said, reaching over and tucking it behind her ear. Pansy squirmed, clearly uncomfortable with the contact, and Joey dropped his hand. Neither mentioned it.

The night had been quiet, low-key. Pansy had turned red when she declined the waiter's offer of a drink "on her tab". Clearly she wasn't missing the leaky Cauldron too much. other than that, conversation had flowed easily, and Joey had enjoyed talking to her. She was sweet, if not somewhat quiet and reserved.

"Thank you for walking me home," Pansy said, and quickly, before Joey could respond, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. All too quickly he was gone, before Joey could register the kiss or the fact that she still had his jacket. He could easily have knocked on her door and requested its return, but he felt as though this would give him a good excuse to see her again.

Plus, though he didn't want to admit it, he liked her having it. A piece of him was staying the night with her.

* * *

**Just A Kiss - Lady Antebellum  
**


	8. Girl

It was three days later, mid-afternoon and nearly time for Joey to head home after a long day of filling in for the _Prophet_'s copy editor. It was tedious work, and though he despised him for it, Joey couldn't blame his colleague for calling in sick yet again. Just as he was straightening the borrowed desk, there was a knock on the door, and in stepped Hannah Abbott.

Joey considered Hannah a friend, though they didn't know each other well. They were on the same page though, stuck at the bottom of the food chain at the _Prophet_ and they often took lunch together to complain about the people they worked for.

Hannah was a serious girl, small and quiet, so Joey almost didn't recognize her as she bounded into the small room with an uncharacteristic grin on her face. "I had to tell you!" she said, and she must have noticed the confused expression on Joey's face, because she laughed and shook her head, as if to knock her thoughts into the right order inside her head.

"Your article," she began, "about the joke shop? Frank loved it! I specifically heard him saying in his office that it 'wasn't an awful piece of work', and he won't be firing you today!"

Joey laughed. Strange as it sounded, this was indeed the highest praise one could receive from the cranky old man. To say that someone wouldn't be getting fired more often than not meant a promotion in the coming future.

"I just had to tell you as soon as I heard," Hanna rambled on, still grinning from ear to ear. "It's amazing what people say in front of you when you blend right into the wall, actually..."

"You aren't giving yourself enough credit!" Joey insisted, but secretly he knew it to be true. With Hannah standing at four foot, ten inches, even Joey himself had been known to look right over the top of her head from time to time.

"Easy for you to say! You're moving up; you've written something!" Joey knew Hannah was dying to be noticed just as much as he was, and he sympathized with her while still being excited for his own accomplishment.

"You're time will come," he assured her, and he meant it. She was sweet and he knew she was an excellent writer. He was sure it was only a matter of time before she was noticed by someone higher up.

"Anyway," Hanna continued, checking the clock on the wall, "I've gotta run. I just had to tell you!" She giggled slightly at the realization that she'd just repeated herself once again.

"Got a hot date?" Joey asked jokingly, grinning. Hannah blushed brightly though, and he raised his eyebrows. So she did have a date. _Good for her_, he thought. He knew she had a second job to support herself and her younger sister, and from the little they had spoken, he sometimes wondered if she did _anything_ but work.

On his walk home, Joey thought of Hannah-poor, sweet, beautiful Hannah-and how even in the face of losing her entire family in the war and raising her kid sister, she was finding time to make a life for herself: working for the _Prophet_ and, apparently, dating. It made him think of Pansy.

Though she didn't talk much of herself, he had managed to gather over dinner and from her drunk babbling the night of their first meeting that she too had lost her whole family and was on her own now. He wondered if thinking about him made her blush the way Hannah had. Strangely, he hoped so. She deserved to be happy just as much as anyone else. She deserved to live, even having faced death itself.

It was as he was thinking these thoughts that he ducked away from the main road and, on a whim, stopped by a flower stand he had passed probably hundreds of times before but never stopped at.

Joey opened his mouth, intent on requesting pansies, then clamped it shut again. _How many other guys have done that?_ he wondered. How many had bought her the flower she was named for and thought themselves terribly clever?

Noting his distress, the man running the stand plucked several fluffy white flowers from a bin ("Peonies," he informed Joey) and handed them to him. When Joey reached for his wallet, the man laughed and help up his hand to stop him.

"Young love," the man said wistfully, looking at Joey but seeming to speak to himself, or perhaps someone whose face he was seeing instead of Joey's. "How can I charge for a token of one's affections? How can I put a price on the world's healing? Flowers grow, flowers die. Young love? _That _I would pay to have again."

Joey was uncertain of the man's meaning, but he thanked him all the same and set off to Pansy's flat, only slightly out of his way on his journey home.

_The world's healing_, the man had said. Healing from the war, Joey understood, for that much, at least, was clear. But how could giving away one's livelihood for free heal the world? And what did it have to do with Joey and a girl he'd barely met?

The man was still celebrating, Joey decided simply. He was middle-aged, clearly he had been through the time of both wars on Voldemort, and he was just thankful to have it over with. He had probably been giving things away left and right. Perhaps he had fought, Joey mused, or maybe he had been in hiding. Perhaps after whatever experience he had, the money didn't seem like such a big deal as once it had.

These thoughts and others made the rest of his walk pass very quickly, and before Joey knew it, he was standing in Pansy's doorway. Not wanting to intrude, he plucked a pen from his pocket and scribbled his phone number on the notecard attached to the flower wrappings and set them neatly in front of her door.

Walking once more toward his flat, Joey stopped suddenly, feeling that he was in far too good a mood to end the day. He headed towards Diagon Alley.

Though he had intended on aimless wandering, he rather unsurprisingly found himself walking straight towards Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. How about that?

* * *

**Girl - Beck**

**AN: Yes, yes, Pansy is a pureblood and there's no way they would have phones. Sorry, but phone's are easier to deal with than owls. Artistic liberties, my lovely readers. So sue me. (That was a joke. Please don't sue me.) However, if you do feel the need to complain, feel free. It's better than no reviews. Flames and everything.  
**


	9. Big Me

Joey entered Weasley's with no small amount of difficulty. It was evident that this close to the beginning of a new school year, the shop was becoming increasingly packed with new eager students and nervous, pacing parents, watching from the sidelines.

"Here to see Katie?" Verity asked, seeming to appear out of thin air and giving Joey and unreadable grin.

"Uh...yeah," Joey replied, failing at gathering his wits. While spur-of-the-moment flowers had seemed a good idea, appearing randomly at Katie's job was starting to feel like a bad idea.

It was too late for second thoughts, however, as Verity already had Joey by the arm and was gliding towards a storeroom with him in tow.

"Oi!" a man called from the back of the hallway. "Who's this then?"

"Lee," Verity chided, "This is Joey. Be nice."

The man, Lee apparently, changed his demeanor immediately. "So you're the one who's got Katie's knickers all twisted up!" he cried, running to shake Joey's hand enthusiastically. "I was starting to think that 'nice' attitude of hers was gonna be a regular thing, but what do ya know? Bitching and whining and back to our Katie, she is!" He laughed to himself as he returned to his work.

When Joey turned back to Verity, she had disappeared, and Katie had replaced her. She did not look happy.

"Yes?" she asked expectantly, arms folded over her chest, eyebrows raised so high they disappeared beneath strawberry-blonde bangs.

"I-I wanted to see you," Joey muttered lamely, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.

"You can't just show up to my job for a social call," Katie replied, her voice clipped, as she glared at him.

"I hadn't seen you-" he began, but she cut him off.

"If I had wanted to see you, I would have called," Katie said quietly, but she ducked her head, unable to look him in the eye. Joey had a feeling she didn't mean a word of it, but he kept quiet.

"I'll see you later, then," Joey said quietly, but when he looked up Katie's eyes were still focused on the ground. He turned slowly and left. Verity made as if to speak to him on his way out, but Joey ignored him.

* * *

**Big Me - The Foo Fighters**

**AN: I know this was a short chapter, but it's been SO long since I updated that I had to get SOMETHING on here. I hope you like it Joey!**


	10. Iris

**AN: As a writer, it pains me to abandon a story, but due to unforeseen personal problems, I am discontinuing updates on Crimson and Clover indefinitely. The story was a lot of fun to write, and I hope that I will be able to continue it at a later date, but as of now, I will no longer be working on it. Thank you so much to those of you who followed this story, and thank you to Joey for being my inspiration. I hope you will forgive me for not finishing your story.**

**And now I bid you all a very fond farewell. It's been great.**

* * *

**Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls  
**


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